Sunday, September 28, 2008

Life in Sweden

Here's an overview of my life in Sweden. My neighbourhood... ;)


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Saturday, September 27, 2008

Europe Trip Compilation

So far, these are the places that i've visited this year. Those in question marks are the places i would like to cover by the end of this year. You can click on the places and there would be links to the photos/videos of the places i've been too.

Of course, if it were possible, i would like to cover more of Europe. I guess that gives me a good to come back here again. ;)


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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

summer of my life

it's been almost 4 weeks since darling left for singapore, but it felt like it has been 4 months already. sigh...

ok. it's been quite a long while since i did a post on my blog. and the excuse i give to my friends is that i'm more into microbloging & photo blogging recently. as you can obviously tell from my frequent updates on my facebooks. oh well, guess i should come back and do some traditional blogging. ;)

alright, so what has been up? summer is over and fall is here. but based on the weather, it seems like winter might be coming early. man, now i know why the swedes treasure their summer so much. the amount of heat and sun that they have is so rare. i'm already missing summer. let's talk abit about summer...

the 5 weeks of my summer has been the best 5 weeks ever! it was totally amazing. mainly it was the traveling around europe which was so fun, but ultimately it was having my darling together with me! if you haven't checked out my photos, please do! they are really fantastic. not that i'm a professional photographer, but the subject itself portrays its beauty. you would be more mesmerized if you were there at the places itself.

we started our journey on 15 july where we rendezvoused in rome. darling fly over to rome transiting @ bangkok & london from singapore, while i flew over from stockholm. when her mum knew about that, she kinda freaked out that the 1st trip she's ever done to europe is gng to be alone. :P but all went well. rome was a place where history came to life. the huge statues and architecture, like the colosseum and the roman forum, expounded its grandiose history. and people always say that the pizza and the pasta in italy is different, that they are much nicer. it's true! the charge their pizza by the weight and i LOVE their potato pizza. simple as it may sound, but it tastes great! and not forgetting their gelato, italian ice-cream. yummy... we spent 3.5 days and 3 nights in rome. sufficient time to cover most of the stuff in rome, then we headed to florence.

florence is a small and beautiful city. i was told by my friends that 1 day is enough to cover florence and pisa. and that's how long we stayed there. and really, that's enough. it's a simple, but bustilng place. and like rome, there were statues all over the city and buildings with elaborate designs from the renaissance era. lovely.

next, we headed to venice by train. going through terrains, mountains and tunnel. it was a rather serene, reflective and peaceful journey. upon reaching venice, it was love at first sight in that beautiful place. it's the only pedestrian city in the world with no vehicles on the island expect for boats. really amazing. we spent 3 days there exploring the place and visiting the neighbouring islands. it was a good time spent there, sufficient to cover all that we wanted to. we even managed to be part of a festival which had a massive firework display that lasted 45mins! those kind you would see during chinese new year, but MORE elaborate and fanciful. extremely impressive. we couldn't have been there at a better time.

after which, we flew to london to meet up with my family and we spent 5 days there. having gone there before, i was their official tour guide and brought them around. then we took an train which ran under the english channel to paris. i was actually hoping to have a nice view underwater. but it was just pitch black. :(

paris is beautiful place. my only gripe is the people. they have such bad attitude towards people who aren't well-versed in french. there were 2 incidents at 2 different restaurants where they were irritated and served so unwillingly just because we couldn't converse with them in french, so snobbish! apart from that, the rest of the trip was really pleasant.

after that, we flew back to stockholm and i brought my family around town.

the next day after my family left for singapore, darling and i flew off to berlin. we spent a night there and then we flew to athens. athens is really over-rated. i'm glad that i heeded ginnelle's advice and stayed only a day there and spent more time at the islands instead. the only thing that's impressive is the acropolis. and i really love the greek language, they just look so cool! ;)

and finally we reached our finally destination of our summer trip. somehow our entire itinerary seem to fit in so well. the places we went slowly built up, with each new place bringing greater fascination and insights. and to top it all, we ended with SANTORINI. if i had to describe santorini in a sentence, it would be "a heaven on earth." just these four words would do. my friends told me it was beautiful and i saw the photos, but all those still couldn't prepare me for what i was about to expect. it is really beautiful beyond description. the place was amazing, the people were down to earth and friendly, the food is good and i was there with my darling. WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE ASKED FOR? oh man... i literally left my heart there as i took the ferry back. that was my first trip to greece but that would definitely not by my last!

if you haven't seen my photos yet, my brethren i beseech you to go take a look. santorini is such a beautiful place. i'm missing it as i type. i had such a time of my life with my dearest darling there. sigh. i WILL definitely visit the other islands in greece with my darling again. i sompa!